Lidia Thorpe may be the last senator you’d expect to jump to meet with King Charles III, but she says she’d be on the first plane if offered the chance.
“I really want to meet with the King,” she told the ABC in her first interview since quitting the Greens.
“Why not? I am a senator. Surely I can do that.”
Last year, Senator Thorpe caused controversy for being forced to repeat her oath of allegiance after she branded Queen Elizabeth a “coloniser” while being sworn into the upper house.
At the time she said she felt uncomfortable with having to swear her allegiance to the Queen, indicating for her, it was a “false” oath.
As to what the Victorian would say to the King if he did extend and invitation, she did not say.
Her royal request comes just over 24 hours after she split with the Greens to lead the “blak sovereignty movement” and “speak freely” on subjects that mattered to her.
Senator Thorpe asked her critics to stop “demonising” her for quitting the minor party following a split between her and the Greens over her reluctance to support the Voice to parliament.
“As a blak woman in the political arena, people need to check themselves,” she said.
“If you’re a true ally, and you believe in Aboriginal people having a say in this country, then stop demonising me for the decisions that I’m making based on a grassroots collective of sovereign blak people.”
She noted the tens of thousands of people who came out to protest for a treaty before a voice during Invasion Day rallies.
Moving forward, the senator questioned why the Prime Minister had invited Peter Dutton to the Voice referendum group meeting, but not members of the blak sovereignty movement.
“I’ve never been invited. So, I will put that out there to the prime minister and the minister for Indigenous Australians that the blak sovereignty grassroots movement wants to meet with the two advisory groups that Labor set up and through a hand-picked process,” she added.
“Let’s bring the groups together. And it will be a conversation that we need to have. We don’t want to fight each other out in public, we want to unite, but we have to ensure that we get some wins along the way.”